Should The Awareness Center Continue on?

Should The Awareness Center Continue on?
The Awareness Center's Daily Newsletter - December 28, 2008 

December 28, 2008 -- Each year around this time The Awareness Center asks you -- individuals from Jewish Communities around the globe -- to evaluate whether or not we have made a difference in the lives of Jewish survivors of sexual violence, their family members and also family members of those who offend. If the answer is yes -- we ask that you remember us when making you year end donations.

Over the last eight years The Awareness Center volunteers have communicated with thousands of individuals who disclosed deep dark secrets they have been too afraid to share and yet somehow have finally found the courage to do so. We listened to each survivor, family member or friend of a survivor's horror stories -- and did our best to offer them hope, healing and concrete ways of helping each individual's particular needs.

The Awareness Center has been shining a light on the issues and ramifications faced by almost all survivors. We have been actively educating Jewish communities about sexual abuse and assault -- including the signs and symptoms of an abused child or that of an adult survivors and the long term ramifications sex crime have been playing on our communities. We did all we could to try to protect and prevent one more child from becoming the next victim of a sex crime -- and to offer a helping hand to those who have already been hurt. The goal has always been to offer hope and healing to a group of individuals who have been silenced for all to long.

One of our most popular venues we have for helping has been our web page. It's been a catalyst for finding hope and healing for those who have been too afraid to call directly to find help. Our web page also offers a way for those interested to come learn and participate in our online self-help and networking groups. For many survivors it's been a place in which they have learned for the first time that they're not alone, aren't the only ones, aren't at fault. If use indicated needs, then it might be helpful to share here that our site averages over 600,000 hits per month. Per MONTH. That is millions of hits a year, from those looking for help in Jewish communities internationally.

Interestingly, come Shabbat or Jewish Holidays the hits drop significantly, only to go up again after the Shabbat or holiday is over. This tells us that many of those utilizing our web page might be observant, "shomer shabbat." It tells us that there are many in the observant communities who need our support and are seeking in a way that feels safe to them and when they can.

If one looks at statistics from the general population, one of every four adults would have been sexually abused by the time they reached the age of eighteen. With upward of five millions Jews living in the US, even conservative odds imply that there are over one million Jewish survivors in our communities. Add to that the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics of close to five and half million Jews living in Israel, and we might well have over another million of Jewish survivors of sexual abuse in our homeland. With additional Jews scattered about the world, the probably numbers of survivors among us add up, with the total of Jewish survivors of sexual abuse and assault numbering in the millions.

We of The Awareness Center--The Jewish Coalition Against Sexual Abuse and Assault (J-CASA)--know that saving one soul of Israel is as if one saved a whole world. What if we were to help heal millions of wounded souls? We know you know it is important. Will you help us?

In addition to individual support, education via website materials and online networking groups/listserves, our volunteers have been working tirelessly on behalf of the many who need healing and support:

Over the last twelve months members of our organization provided testimony at legislative hearings across the United States in hopes of helping increase or abolish the statute of limitations and offering "windows" on filing civil suits against their offenders -- which in turn helps to publicly name those who be continuing to committing heinous criminal sexual acts against our children. This would also finally offer those who have been victimized their day in court.

During 2008, The Awareness Center added several educational events to the list of activities and outreach, including the showing of the film "Narrow Bridge" in both Washington DC and in Baltimore, MD; were represented at several conferences including an event at the JCC in Wilmington, DE and another in New York. We also held a press conference in Brooklyn to help shine a light and offer our support and some measure of protection to Rabbi Nochem Rosenberg--a brave whistle blower about abuse in his Satmar community of Williamsburg (Brooklyn, NY) --who was 'rewarded' for his courage to support the survivors and provide them with a hotline from his very home to call in to, by being threatened at knife-point and gunpoint, then actually shot at.

We had a busy year, and plans for the upcoming year are already forming. We hope to have monthly educational, self-help, and networking meetings in Baltimore, New York, and Chicago for those interested in meeting others with similar interests and experiences, and for those interested in learning more about how to help support survivors, protect our communities, and heal those among us who'd been harmed. Our goal is to help foster a dialog among community members and to help teach those who are willing to, to advocate for themselves and/or others. Our plans include opening branches of The Awareness Center in several locations in New York State (Monsey, Long Island; and Brooklyn, NY), as well as in Lakewood, NJ, Chicago, IL, and Los Angeles, CA.

There is much to be done, and we are willing to do it. However, we cannot do it or remain open without your help: we need additional volunteers and we need your financial support.

Our statistics speak for themselves: thousands of survivors supported, 600,000 hits per month, growing interest and willingness to explore this difficult topic. But we cannot do this without you.

Please help. Please remember us in your year end donations. Funds can be sent to us on line using a credit card by clicking on the donation button at the top of this page or by sending a check or money order to:

The Awareness Center, Inc.

P.O. Box 4824

Skokie, IL 60076

Ava Miedzinski's Story - A Jewish Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse Speaks Out

Ava Miedzinski's Story - A Jewish Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse Speaks Out
© (2008) by Ava Miedzinski

My sharing my story with the Awareness Center helped me learn how normal I am despite what I went through, and it was a relief to learn that so much of what has plagued me for so many years (decades, actually) has a name--PTSD, a typical consequence of traumatic experiences.

Learning that I could still take my abuser to task helped, even though I have since learned that my abuser is deceased. I can put my personal story in a new place. My abuse led to my becoming sterile from an infection that disturbed the development of my inner apparatus. But I was not left without blessings. Hashem saw to it that I became a mom to a lovely baby whose mother could not raise her. Now grown and married, my daughter is the promise of a future with grandchildren.

I have begun to work to help others by working with the center to prevent abusers who are still abusing children from continuing to cause trauma and life long difficulties to others.

Being an Orthodox woman, I know how terrible it is to discover that incest and pedophilia are as prevalent in the Jewish community as in any human community. Being Jewish means learning to restrain our human impulses, to overcome the animal drives that keep us from being complete reflections of the divine image in which we were created. To discover that rabbis and leaders in the Jewish community are abusing children because they refuse to restrain their most inappropriate impulses is a shock. To have to make our community aware of such people is a shanda, but it is necessary. How else do stop these people? Sending them to Israel or to Australia or to other schools is no answer. That is a crime. It makes us accessories to that abuse, not a just and righteous people.

I beg the sane and caring of our leadership to lend their support in keeping our community safe and healthy for our children so that no such filthy laundry needing cleaning should have to be laundered in public. I ask everyone in the community to lend their all to support the Awareness Center
in making our community safer for our children.

Sincerely,
Ava Miedzinski

Please send your donation checks to:

The Awareness Center, Inc.
P.O. Box 65273
Baltimore, MD 21209

Judaism and Eating Disorders

Judaism and Eating Disorders

By Lisa S. Lenkiewicz

Connecticut Jewish Ledger - December 25, 2008

Stop worrying, and meet me at the water cooler

 

In many offices, the hot topic of conversation is L'affaire Lewinsky. Not at the Connecticut Jewish Ledger.

 

All day long we bump into each other at the water cooler, but it's not to chat. We are too busy forcing down our eight glasses. 

 

On any given day, someone in our office is on a diet. (Most everyone that is, except for the men, who seem able to eat what they want.) The method varies - some are doing Weight Watchers, others, the no-carbohydrates plan, or the cabbage soup diet. I'm on a plan also, although the nutritionist I see would correct me and say, "You're not on a diet, you're just eating healthily." (He can say what he wants, but not having many fats and swearing off my beloved chocolate sounds like a diet to me.)

 

At this place where I am learning how to "eat healthily," I often run into Jewish women I know from all walks of life. "What's going on here?" I wondered. "Why are so many of us having to fight to shed pounds? Do Jewish women struggle with weight issues more than other women?"

 

In the spring edition of Lilith Magazine, there was an interesting article titled, "Why Jewish Girls Starve Themselves." The thrust of the piece was about the high rate of eating disorders among Jewish women, discussing how issues of food, body, sexuality and appetites are "used and confused in attempts to deal with interpersonal relationships, or to deal with pain" - including second- or third-generation Holocaust trauma. I don't know much about this psycho-speak, but I was intrigued by the title of the article.

 

The flip side of overeating is the obsession with being thin. Too often lately you hear of young girls who decline dessert or birthday cake, saying they are watching their weight. One 8-year-old girl was heard complaining her thighs were too fat. When I was her age, I'm not sure I knew where my thighs were.

 

We all have our excuses about how we ended up this way: When we were young, our grandparents constantly urged food on us; we had to clean our plates out of guilt for the "starving children in Africa;" it's in our genes - Jews don't drink, we like to eat. 

 

My excuse has always been having two pregnancies close together and three operations in two years. I did try to fight the battle of the bulge. I bought the "Stop Kvetching and Start Stretching" exercise video. I bought the video starring Gilad, that handsome Israeli who leads aerobics classes at exotic locales in Hawaii. I have a Richard Simmons tape. But when my doctor said my stomach muscles were shot, that was just the excuse I needed. No pain, no gain they say? For me it was, yes pain, and yes complain. I simply stopped doing the situps, and voila! The pain went away.

 

I looked to our Jewish texts for some guidance on shmirat haguf (guarding the body). Solomon wisely counseled, "He who guards his mouth and tongue guards himself from trouble" (Proverbs 21:23). In other words, one who refrains from gluttony and guards his tongue from speaking except for what is necessary, stays out of trouble. Good advice.

 

"It is advisable for one to accustom himself to have breakfast in the morning." This suggestion is from the Shulchan Aruch (Code of Jewish Law) under "rules concerning physical well-being." Our sages must have been right - every diet plan I've seen stresses the importance of eating a good breakfast. The Shulchan Aruch also says that it is best to omit one meal during the week, in order that the stomach may have a rest and its digestive power be strengthened. Not the advice my nutritionist would give - something to do with metabolism and storing energy - but it might be worth trying, nonetheless.

 

Although statistics indicate eating disorders are prevalent among Jewish women, there still is reason for optimism. The therapist who was interviewed in that Lilith article said Judaism is a potential cure for dysfunctional eating, what with our religion's "enormous potential for renewal." I do believe in teshuva - that we can turn, change and do better. If I fall down in my weight management from time to time, well, tomorrow is another day.

 

So, no guilt over that Hershey bar my son magnanimously offered up from the goodie bag he got today. Tomorrow, I'll be first in line at the water cooler, I swear.

 

Lisa S. Lenkiewicz is managing editor of the Connecticut Jewish Ledger in West Hartford.

 

Remembering Florence Rush - Founder of the Anti-Child Sexual Abuse Movement

Florence Rush, 90, feminist author who focused on child sexual abuse

The Villager - December 24, 2008

Florence Rush, author of “The Best Kept Secret: Sexual Abuse of Children,” and the first feminist theorist to call children’s sexual abuse a political and patriarchal issue, died on Tues., Dec. 9, at her home at 61 Jane St., just short of her 91st birthday.

Florence was born in Manhattan and grew up in the Bronx before moving to Westchester in the early 1950s. She worked as a psychiatric social worker and community activist in New Rochelle, was married and raised three children. Rush joined a chapter of Older Women’s Liberation (OWL) in 1970 and subsequently moved to Greenwich Village.

She electrified a New York Radical Feminist Conference on Rape in April 1971, winning a standing ovation for her speech on what was then a startling new concept: Her theory, inspired by evidence she had collected in a facility for delinquent girls, identified familiar males — fathers, stepfathers, older brothers, uncles, neighbors and family friends — as the major sexual abusers of children, and traced the toleration of such abuse to the beginnings of history and cultural/religious customs. Family abuse had been ignored by the reigning Freudian psychologists of the day, who preferred to theorize about seductive children and girlish fantasies.

A wealth of books on child sexual abuse written by academics, journalists and celebrities followed Rush’s pioneering papers and lectures, while personal accounts were to become a staple on television talk shows. Rush’s “The Best Kept Secret” was published in 1980.

When Rush’s younger son, Matthew, was stricken with AIDS in the mid-1980s, she formed one of the first mothers’ support groups. A lecturer for Women Against Pornography in its early years, she later worked with the New York chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW), on its Images of Children in the Media Committee. She also enjoyed a weekly poker game with neighbors and friends until failing health curtailed her activities.

She is survived by her son, Thomas, her daughter, Eleanor, and two grandchildren. She also leaves a network of friends who warmly recall her gracious hospitality in New York and on Fire Island, and who will never forget her brilliant, original mind, her singular contribution to feminist theory, her nurturing advice and aid, her impossible platform shoes, and her baked lasagna.

Jewish Survivors Speak Out in Maryland.

The Awareness Center is proud to announce our first

Jewish Survivors Speak Out in Maryland

When: February 8, 2009 from 1:30 - 3:30 pm
Where: Pikesville Library, Pikesville, MD
Sponsor: The Awareness Center, Inc.

If you are a Jewish survivor of child sexual abuse and sexual assault and would like to be a part of our panel, contact Vicki Polin. Slots are filling up quickly.


The event is FREE and open to the public. Seating is limited. Reservations are required.

Dark Secrets - Powerful Rabbis Try To Influence Cases

Dark Secrets - Powerful Rabbis Try to influence Law Enforcement

This following is very powerful video which should be shared with everyone you know. Over the last eight years The Awareness Center has been saying very similar things that is being said in this news report that aired on New York's PIX-TV News (www.wpix.com).

The problems in Brooklyn, NY are very similar to every other charedi community in the United States (Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Lakewood, Monsey, etc.), Canada, Australia, South Africa, Israel and beyond. The names of the powerful rabbis who protect alleged and convicted sex offenders may change, but the stories are practically identical.

Cantor Stanley Rosenfeld Back in Prison in Rhode Island

The Awareness Center has been notified that convicted sex offender, Cantor Stanley Rosenfeld is back in prison after violating the terms of his probation twice. More information about this will be posted on The Awareness Center's site on Cantor Stanley Rosenfeld within the next 24 hours.


Stanely Rosenfeld, is former cantor and spiritual leader at Temple Am David, Warwick, RI. He originally received a 10-year suspended sentence after pleading no contest to molesting a 12-year-old boy he was tutoring.


Name: Stanley Rosenfeld
Date of Birth: 10/15/1933

Approximate Address:
ReIncarcerated Status

City/Town:
Cranston, RI, 02920


Convicted of:
Second Degree Child Molestation

Community Supervision:
Subject is under probation supervision until May 20, 2011

Forward: Letter to the Editor - Secrecy Is No Solution To Sexual Abuse, by Vicki Polin

Letter to the Editor
Secrecy Is No Solution To Sexual Abuse
by Vicki Polin
Forward - December 4, 2008


It saddens me that your November 28 editorial “Abuse and Trust” took a stand behind New York Assemblyman Dov Hikind instead of supporting what is needed to protect children from being sexually victimized.

It’s heart-breaking to watch how a few Jewish leaders in the Orthodox world keep manipulating community members into believing they do not have to report heinous crimes committed against our children to child protective services. Hikind is wrong to keep secret from law enforcement officials the names of both alleged sex offenders and those who have been victimized. Each day that goes by that he refuses to work with those who can really help means another child is being sexually victimized.

One has to realize that turning over the names of alleged sex offenders and also those who were allegedly sexually abused to child protection workers does not mean that the names will be made public. It only means there is a possibility that those who perpetrate crimes against our children may be prosecuted and that those who have been sexually victimized will be offered real help.

As Jews, we all have a moral responsibility to protect our youth. We all must consider ourselves mandated reporters — meaning if you suspect a child is at risk of harm you make a hotline report. Leave the investigating to those who have the specialized training and can conduct forensic investigations. Dov Hikind does not have this sort of training.

Vicki Polin
Founder and CEO
The Awareness Center, Inc.
Baltimore, Md.

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Dark Secrets - Shocking Sex Abuse Allegations in Brooklyn's Ultra Orthodox Communities

Shocking Sex Abuse Allegations
By Mary Murphy
WPIX (NY) - December 3, 2008

Dark secrets are emerging from a local, religious community that's known for its modesty and old world values.

PIX 11 has learned that a prominent, Orthodox Jewish leader will meet with the Brooklyn District Attorney to talk about allegations of sexual abuse in religious schools and homes.

For more information go to:

• Regarding Assemblyman Dov Hikind -Not doing the right thing
• Rabbi Nochum Rosenberg - Victim Advocate Speaks Out About Being Shot
• Case of Rabbi Yehuda Kolko
• Case of Avrohom Mondrowitz